Based on your normal play style how do you see yourself acquiring the materials you need to craft in SWTOR?

Will you use the auction house mechanic relying on other players to provide the auctions for you to buy, or will you rely on yourself and your companions to gather what you need via the gathering mechanics and the missions?

Read on!

They both have pro’s and cons, and I realize we don’t know everything about the mechanics for either, but it is still fun to look at our past MMO habits and think on the future and speculate.

I don’t even remember what mmo it was that first introduced the auction house mechanic, maybe someone can help me remember, if you know please leave a comment and let me know?

All I know is I felt a dramatic shift in my play style as a crafter when this became common place. In all previous games (obviously because the AH wasn’t present) I happily gathered everything I needed personally. Sure if I saw a deal that was too good to pass up on some raw resources on a players vendor like in UO, I would buy those items knowing that it was a good deal.

For the most part though I felt the urge to do this myself.

I don’t know if it was the feeling of accomplishment from doing it myself, or that the need to explore the online realm pushed me on, or maybe just a lack of coin to afford to shop on a regular basis, I am not sure, maybe a mixture of all.

Lets look at the some of the pro’s and con’s of each of those strategies,

AUCTION HOUSE:

PROS:

-with an auction house system you should be able to have an ample supply of almost all items needed at most times, making it highly dependable. (most of the time, depending on server population)

-with an auction style of sale you may get the opportunity to get some “steals of a deal” because the person who lists the item isn’t up to date with it’s current going rate.

-you can also use the AH to offload non gray items you no longer need allowing you to fund other purchases.

-as a side benefit the usage of an AH is usually one of the best ways to make money in games, fastest.

CONS:

-you will need a heavy influx of coinage if you plan to do most of your acquiring here.

-you will have to put a substantial amount of time into watching and using the AH, time that could have been spent exploring other avenues of the game, effectively isolating yourself in front of a AH listings page instead of playing the game. (or hopefully an auction house smart phone app, Bioware if you’re listening….)

-you could really get ripped off due to over inflation of an item, or have to pay an exorbitant amount for something because it is “the flavor of the month” and you need it now.

SELF AND COMPANION GATHERING:

PROS:

-no start-up cost in credits, just time required and hard work usually.

-you get to explore and learn the worlds while out and about. Based on what we have been told in the past that you would get experience from discovery of locations while exploring, this is an added bonus.

-can also make credits from loot from mob corpses, and exp from kills while gathering allowing you to at least work on raising your characters overall level.

CONS:

-not always able to access resources due to weird spawn rates, or not a high enough overall level to access the location or zone too tough.

I realize this is not a all inclusive list but its what I had in mind tonight. I am sure as soon as I publish this article I will think of even more 🙂

There are other issues to be factored into the equation also when trying to figure out which style is best for you, like how the companions are going to affect the gathering side of things, the offline skill queue ability, and on and on. Hopefully soon we will begin to get more information on crew skills and auction house mechanics so we can make better predictions.

When taking it all in I see myself somewhere in the middle, about a 50/50 split.

With the type of class I have chosen to be my first character (bounty hunter) I see myself being able to excel at the physical gathering aspect of things nicely. With this class I should be able to fill all roles that I need to survive and prosper.

With my crew skills crafting ability that I have narrowed down to be my starting profession chosen, I have also decided that I will probably be on the AH constantly because the items I make in that certain profession will be a huge credit maker, based on what I have observed over the years watching MMO crafting/auction house mechanics.

So that means for me at least that I am going to have to spend time invested in both styles of play, spending quality time in each. Until I get some new revelation this is the play style that I hope will serve me best. Now if I can just figure out where to get the time to actually play the game?? (maybe the image in this post will help me find time)

Based on the information we know about the crew skills system now, what do you think will be your best advantage? What do you feel the percentage for you will look like?

9 Responses to “Will you auction house or gather in Star Wars The Old Republic MMO?”

I am the self gather for sure. Its the most cost effective and its always profits. You can almost never lose money gathering it by yourself.

I think this time around I am going to stop selling all my extras and leftovers and donate them to guild if its needed. I’ll be losing credits, but whatever helps the guild reach its maximum potential.

now we are starting to see a diversified response, this is great thank you for taking your time to let us know what you guys prefer in this instance. I would love to see about 10k responses to this question now and then after release. It would be very interesting to see how peoples responses changed based on before and after release.

They may have some innovative features on either choice that might make it very interesting.

I cant wait to get into testing some day so i can get my hands on this stuff. 🙂

Given my situation – basically having nearly unlimited free-time to play SWTOR, I will likely do most of my resource gathering in person, but use the Auction House as a supplemental source of materials – either when I am in a time crunch, too lazy to wait or I happen to spot a really good deal. Of course, as we learn more about how the system works, we will be better able to gauge what style suits us best.

One thing that I am anxiously waiting to see is the exact details of BioWare’s stance on Add-Ons, and whether anyone feels compelled to write a SWTOR version of the WoW Mod “Auctioneer” – or something similar. Without such a Mod, it is much more difficult to keep track of the prices of a large and diverse in-game economy. BioWare, from what it looks like, is going to have a *very diverse* collection of in-game items available right at launch. Thus, it may be hard to determine just what the appropriate value of any one particular item is with any real certainty without such a mod. But, we shall see.

I am also anxiously awaiting this news about if they will allow mods. I am hoping they will because people will create many for sure. The amount of items that will be in this game from what I can tell now looks to be staggering.

We are going to need some sort of mod to help tweak the auction house usage with this size of an item database.

I am also really looking forward to seeing their in game auction house tools and what functionality they bring to the table with that. I am hoping they have some innovative things up their sleeve.

I am an odd one, I don’t usually consume the resources I gather. I am usually more of a resource provider.

I usually max out my ability or time to provide resources to my inner community then take the surplus to the market for a greater profit. I created a mining company, Core Resources, in SWG and had hundreds of employees helping out when they could and making an easy profit themselves gathering minerals and energy. We provided the resources to the crafters in our Avian Technology & Trade guild. In SWG we utilized vendors in our player city as well as allied cites to sell resources directly to the crafting community. I also used the SWG market, but it was buggy when it first came out, so it took a long time before customers felt it was reliable.

In WoW I was a heavy resource provider, but I also dabbled in crafting. I never really enjoyed the wow crafting experience. I mostly sold recourses directly on the auction house.

In TOR I don’t know where I stand on being a full-time resource provider or doing some crafting on my own. My player Association, Avian Gamers Network, always has many crafters. The relationship usually works well for me no matter what I choose. If I go full resource provider I can supply tons of resources to our crafters as well as the global market. If I go crafter, I will most likely do a combination of buying from other guild resource providers, gather my own, and buy from the market.

ah man I miss those days of the types of mechanics we had in SWG and UO before that. The player ran cities were awesome. In TOR I dont expect those kinds of mechanics but i wish they were going to be there.

TOR wont be that kind of sandbox (or so we have been told) but hopefully we will have enough mechanics to where we can fulfill those kinds of roles within our guild communities and on the AH at large.

Communities like yours though will have a distinct advantage over smaller player groups in that they will have a bigger internal network from which to draw resources from before they have to resort to a AH or self gathering.